


Fear

by tatooedlaura



Series: Life [24]
Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-09 00:35:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8869003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatooedlaura/pseuds/tatooedlaura
Summary: Mulder’s whispered words, the promise of at least one night tethered to him, made her crack, needing space and time to divest herself of the thoughts that in one possible future, he’d be alone.





	

Scully didn’t mean to let herself remember things. She had been doing her best to keep her mind in the here and now, not in the back then. Back then was chemotherapy and vomiting and aching limbs and fear and pain and sleepless nights and blurry days. Back then was Mulder cleaning the floor of his car when she couldn’t make it home to her own bathroom to throw up in peace. Back then was her mother looking at her as if she were already dead. Back then was deciding what she would like to give her family to remember her and worrying that the world wouldn’t care if she left it or not.

Back then invaded her without warning when she lost her grip on here and now under the influence of the laundry hypnosis. She forgot she was in the middle of Utah at a laundromat until she felt Mulder’s hand on her knee and his voice drift to her ears from miles away, “you still in there?”

She did her best to keep it together as his body moved between her knees and his arms circled her waist. Not meeting his gaze was her best defense but once he conquered that, it was all she could do to not fly apart when their foreheads met, skin on skin, a connection more intimate than anything she’d shared with anyone else in her world, past or present.

Mulder’s whispered words, the promise of at least one night tethered to him, made her crack, needing space and time to divest herself of the thoughts that in one possible future, he’d be alone.

&&&&&&&&&&&

Mulder, laundry folded and in the bag over his shoulder, made his way quietly into the hotel room, wondering what he would find. Hoping against hope it wasn’t denial mode, he didn’t have to wait long to find out, given after he turned back from locking the door behind him, he found her standing in the bathroom, leaning over the sink, blood streaming from her nose.

Her tears mixing with the puddle at the bottom of the sink.

Clean clothes forgotten as they dropped to the carpet, he was beside her in a moment, holding a dry towel to her face, flashing back to more than one occasion he’d done this, in the bathroom at the Bureau, beside the car on the side of the road, at 2:30 in the afternoon behind the Sheriff’s department building in Tennessee.

“Here. Why don’t you sit down?”

She shook her head, “no.”

Not arguing, he wet a washcloth with his free hand, swapping it out with the dry one, making sure the bleeding had stopped before cleaning her up for the second time in two days. After washing the sink clean, he took her hand, about to walk her back to the main room, when she pulled him to a stop.

Keeping hold of him, she stared at his reflection in the mirror, meeting his anguished eyes with her own, “I can’t do this alone, Mulder. Not again.”

“You weren’t alone before.”

This time, it was Scully who took his hand, moving him out of the bathroom and towards the bed, grabbing one of their last clean towels, “can we go to bed now?”

“Tired?”

“Not really but we can burrow under covers and watch bad TV and forget everything but this room.” He watched her spread the towel over her pillow, then met the truth in her eyes when she looked at him again, “I don’t need to be ruining the bed when it happens again.”

“If, Scully … If.”

With an empty look, “when.”

&&&&&&&&&

First they did the mundane tasks of re-packing clean items, then changing into pajamas, brushing teeth, washing face, moisturizing with a small bottle of light green goo that soaked into her dry skin and made her cheeks pink and smooth. She let him change first, then he stood across from the bathroom door, watching her do her rituals, his ankles crossed, arms behind his lower back, eyes intent, learning.

She knew he was staring at her but she didn’t comment, choosing to do her things out in the open, not shutting the door like she normally would, allowing him into her life in those intimate ways that mean absolutely nothing to anyone else in the world but she could see him burning into his memory for the rest of time.

Once she finished, she reached to turn off the light but didn’t, first asking him, “you need to get in here?”

He shook his head, pushing off the wall as she flicked that room into darkness, then followed at her heels, close enough to reach for her waist, which he did, his large hands pulling her to a stop as he pressed up behind her, mouth once again by her ear, “I swear, you won’t be alone, Scully, no matter what.”

All she could do was nod, knowing to open her mouth would let loose a scream that would break the world and destroy Mulder in a heartbeat. Instead, she reached down, covering his hands with hers, leaning her head against his lips, “thank you.”

Leaving with a kiss just below her ear, he nudged her forward, “go get in bed and find us some crap TV to watch. I’m going to raid the vending machine outside for late-night snacks and beverage options.”

“You make it sound so fancy.”

&&&&&&&&&&&

She was nearly asleep on his chest, her chosen resting spot for the evening, her tensed limbs and coiled muscles and unorganized fear finally giving way to a warmth that seeped into her bones, quieted her mind, the sound of Mulder’s heartbeat under her ear thudding loud enough to banish her anxiety momentarily. Her hand was under his shirt, one of her new and very favorite places in the universe, warm flesh under warmer palm. Absently tracing abstract pictures with the tip of her index finger, caught somewhere between awake and dreams, “did you know you’re my best friend?”

Mulder, floating in a little of his own dream world, all hazy and soft, “did you know you are mine?”

Crawling her hand further up his chest, she ran into his nipple, rough under her fingertips, “have you ever wondered about us? If we had done things differently, where we’d be?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” Leaving his nipple, she drifted down to his belly button, then over his side, coming to a halt as she shifted her leg over his, putting him in full body-pillow status, “I’m not sure what I’m talking about.”

“You asleep?”

“I think so. I’m comfortable here and safe and this is where I love you most.”

Well, that did it.

As she softly began snoring against him, his tears slid down, gathering in his ears before dropping to his pillow.

&&&&&&&&&&&

Around 3am, she woke up, needing to pee, which she did, then returned to find Mulder’s eyes tracking her back to the bed. Curling up back with him, “sorry if I woke you up.”

“You okay?”

“Yup. Just too much ice tea before bed.”

His relieved sigh told her everything, “I got worried.”

Kissing his chin, “I know you did.”

With her face so close, he couldn’t help but press his lips to hers, fear, anger, pain driving him forward, even as she drew away, her head pulling back after several moments against him. Taking only an instant to realize his mistake, he moved away as well, apologizing profusely, “I’m sorry … I’m .. that was … I’m sorry.”

Resting her forehead against the tip of his nose, “I can’t right now. It’ll just seem like some frantic act of desperation and since it would actually be a frantic act of desperation, we shouldn’t. I don’t want something to happen just because we’re both scared and need to feel better for a little while.”

He agonized several seconds over asking what exactly she meant by ‘right now’ but the warm flow of air out her nose against his mouth made him stop, think for one moment that it would be out of desperation. That was the last way he wanted Scully, clinging to him not because she couldn’t live without him but because she might not live.

Shifting, he kissed the end of her nose, “then I have an idea.”

Tired but restless, she suddenly itched to do something, anything that would get her moving, “does it involve clowns or prancing reindeer?”

“What?”

He could see in her eyes the need to move on, break the tension, table the kiss, find a way to uncurl herself from him without offending him, “what’s your idea?”

“We should go south, like, really south. You mentioned Baja so I think we should go, right now. It’ll be warmer and lower elevation and there’ll be more moisture in the air by the ocean than up here in the high desert.”

Rolling away from his chest, she stood up, holding out her hand to him, “let’s go.”

Mulder looked at her with a little bit of ‘um, have you flipped your wig?’, “it’s 3am. I was thinking we could get going after breakfast.”

“Why wait?” Her brain was already churning, spewing several ideas before they had to time for refinement, “if we go through San Diego, I might be able to see if Jake can fit me in for an MRI, or at least some bloodwork. He still owes me for hiding his girlfriend in my dorm room in second year.”

He’d heard of Jake, the large, rough-looking lumberjack who had hands like Frisbees and could perform the most delicate of surgeries on unborn babies. Deciding this was not the time for petty jealousy and off-color comments, he nodded with some enthusiasm as he waved her towards the bathroom, “go get ready.”

“Back in a minute. Knock if you need to come in.”

In a feat similar to the great packing frenzy of June 1999, they were cleaned, dressed and in the car roughly 30 minutes later, and that included both taking individual 5 minute showers while Mulder wished he could have shared his with her and take 10 minutes instead.

Scully volunteered to drive first, Mulder quickly digging into their atlas for at least a general south running road. Finding and proceeding, Mulder didn’t fall asleep until after he finished watching the sun come up through the driver’s window, silhouetting her, the edge of her face glowing as if on fire, the rest of her in shadow.

She knew he was watching but she didn’t mind, her hands gripping the wheel loosely, her hair an uncombed tangle, her nose turned up on the end and her chin pointing downward. Feeling his eyes boring into her, she took one hand and slid it across the console, finding his without ever taking hers from the long, empty road ahead.


End file.
